


You'd Be So Easy to Love

by Blake



Series: Cole Porter 30-day challenge [5]
Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Drinking, F/F, First Time, diet talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-19 00:49:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: It’s taken her a long, long time to notice that the way she feels overwhelmed by Debbie’s beauty, success, eloquence, and poise is not actually related to her own inadequacy. She’s finally figured out what it really is, and she’s not going to stop until she gets it all out.
Relationships: Debbie Eagan/Ruth Wilder
Series: Cole Porter 30-day challenge [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610263
Comments: 2
Kudos: 69





	You'd Be So Easy to Love

Ruth has practiced her lines for days and spent hours setting the scene: a half-dozen roses in yellow, not red, with baby’s breath; a chilled bottle of chardonnay from the winery in Napa they spent a weekend at once; and a bunch of different lettuces and fat-free dressings she picked out at random, because she’s trying to be more respectful and less pushy about the way Debbie lives her life.

She freezes up, though, the worst case of stage fright she’s had since the seventh grade. Debbie shows up looking like she just woke up, hair held back in a messy ponytail, eyes brightened by day-old smudges of eye makeup, the soft skin of her cleavage sitting casually, innocently, at the front of her stained, loose gray v-neck. It all sets Ruth back on her heels, struggling to remember why she needs to _talk_ to Debbie about how obsessed with her she is and open herself up to even more ridicule than she already experiences just by existing in comparison to women as beautiful and perfect as Debbie.

Besides, Debbie clearly needs to spend an hour venting about her co-producer on her latest show. They make it through the whole bottle of wine without Debbie even commenting on the label. Ruth opens a white zinfandel she finds in the fridge and they move to the couch to watch the VHS of some disaster movie Debbie rented and brought over, because watching bad acting always has always made them both feel better about their lives.

Ruth clutches her knees to her chest and waits for a pause between Debbie’s angry ranting and her beautiful, eye-squinting laughter in the blue glow of the small TV screen. Debbie’s laughter has been so much bigger, freer, and more frequent than it was before Ruth ruined her life, and that fact has given Ruth hope as she practiced her lines this week. Maybe heartbreak and laughter go well together, maybe they give each other meaning.

“Hey, Debbie?” she starts, immediately adding, “Hear me out,” because her main goal here is actually getting all the words out. Any other results beyond that are beyond her imagining; she just wants to say her lines.

“Um, okay.” Debbie looks around nervously, probably looking for her son, her favorite thing to resentfully hide behind now that Ruth is partially out of the doghouse. A flame of victory lights in Ruth’s chest just to see Debbie stripped of her defense mechanisms.

“I know… I don’t expect anything to come of this. I just want to start by saying that.” Ruth locks her gaze onto the sinking ship on the screen, because she had no practice saying this while actually looking at Debbie’s brightly flushed face, piercing eyes, strong arms, soft skin. “I know you’re so far out of my league, you’re practically on the moon, but I want to be honest here.”

“Do _not_ do this again,” Debbie hisses.

Her voice is only tinged by, not saturated by, cruelty, but it still takes Ruth by surprise. “Do what?” she asks, breaking her commitment to getting through her lines without interruption.

“I’m so fucking sick of hearing about how _easy_ you think I have it because I’m so much intrinsically better than you, or some shit. Can you just… _not_ use my supposed innate brilliance to flagellate yourself with, for once?”

Ruth listens, and tightens her grip around her knees, trying to switch modes from reciting to analyzing. It’s a struggle not to just crumble under the weight of how quick-witted and articulate Debbie is even _without_ days of rehearsal. “I’m sorry.” She has become an expert at saying _sorry_ as a placeholder with Debbie, a word to bide herself time and catch up with all the ways that she is, truly, sorry. “I know that I do that,” she concedes, quietly, after the sinking ship has hit the bottom of the blue studio-lot ocean. It’s taken her a long, long time to notice that the way she feels overwhelmed by Debbie’s beauty, success, eloquence, and poise is not actually related to her own inadequacy. She’s finally figured out what it really is, and she’s not going to stop until she gets it all out. “But that’s not what I mean, not this time.”

The couch dips under them as Debbie sinks back dramatically against the back cushion, folding her arms. She has no idea what is coming, but Ruth has to tell her. “What I’m trying to say is, you’re obviously easy to love, for so many reasons, _because_ of how hard you work! And everything else. And I’m obviously less easy to love— _not_ because I have it less easy. But because I’ve fucked up so many things. And I _haven’t_ worked hard enough to fix it. And I just… I thought about it really hard, and I realized… All I want, really, is to fix it. However I can.”

“Fix what?” Debbie asks, voice dark and unreadable behind her.

There’s a big explosion on the surface of the water in the movie, so bright it makes Ruth blink. She doesn’t know how to answer that question. “I just… I think I’m in love with you,” she says, not even pausing to breathe or think before she pushes on. “And I’m not trying to use that as an excuse for all the mistakes I’ve made. But I think that I would have made better choices if I had known that I was in love with you. And now… Now, I know. So I just want you to know, so you know I’ll probably be making better decisions.”

The air in the room gets cold, damp, and quiet in the silence when she stops talking. The movie’s hero is kissing a girl half his age, and Ruth wants to kick herself for her terribly awkward timing, but she’s too sick to her stomach with nerves for effective self-recrimination.

“What, um…” Debbie clears her throat. Ruth hears her slurp down another sip of wine. At least she doesn’t sound mad. “What are you expecting me to do with this information?”

Ruth didn’t think this far ahead. She kind of thought she might drop dead after getting to this point. “I don’t know,” she mumbles, resting her chin on her knees. “You can ignore it.” The words twist her gut when she says them, and that’s when she realizes she doesn’t _want_ Debbie to ignore it.

Debbie’s voice cuts through. “Have you thought about kissing me?”

She has, but thinking about it makes her cry. She thinks it would be like coming home. “Yes,” she confesses, committed to baring her wounds forever more.

“Have you thought about fucking me?”

She has, but her mind’s eye always whites out whenever she even imagines feeling their bodies pressed together naked, with no shiny, showy leotard between them, just skin and breath and it would probably feel so hot to the touch… “Yes.”

“Do you think it would be good?”

Ruth flinches away, not strong enough to keep her wounds open after all. She grinds her forehead into the callused skin of her knees. “I’m sorry if it creeps you out. I promise, it’s not like, as bad as it sounds. And if you don’t want to work with me anymore….” She can’t finish her sentence, too shaken by the prospect of never seeing Debbie again. She did not prepare for the possibility of doing irrevocable damage.

“You’re such an idiot,” Debbie hisses, and then there’s a strong, cool hand grabbing Ruth by the chin, pulling her up and wrenching her neck, and it feels so familiar that Ruth hardly registers it at first. She doesn’t register what’s happening at all until Debbie’s parted mouth presses against hers, hot, firm, and confident—a kiss.

Kissing her back is the most natural thing in the world. Ruth falls into it and spills open, letting Debbie into her space, into her wounds, letting it all seep in before the stinging starts. Debbie tastes like the earth, like wine and salt and longing. She feels like coming home.

“You have no idea,” Debbie says, breathing hard and then sucking Ruth’s lip into her mouth to chew and then breathing harder. “No idea how good it can be.”

“I know,” Ruth says mindlessly with not a clue as to whether it’s defense, apology, reassurance, or begging. “I know.”


End file.
